The New Hobby For Winter Is Electronic Music Composition And Mixing. Because I'm Sick Of Not Being Able

The new hobby for Winter is electronic music composition and mixing.  Because I'm sick of not being able to have the perfect song, so, as ever, I have to learn a whole new skill set to get the product I really want.  Such is the curse and joy of people who are driven to make.

Sanctum Sanctorum

Stocking the loft in increments. I keep running across stuff I need and adding it to my ongoing note. I also did all the laundry- as in every item- and discovered just how delightfully warm it is in here. I'm not even using a comforter right now. I foresee the loft being my sacred oasis from the snow when the time comes. It's like this apartment was built to order, as if it exists on a fairy circle or at the intersection of ley-lines or as if I came upon it by some divine providence. I know that it was really relentless, unceasing late-night craigslisting, but with how hot the properties are around here, it might just as well have been magic. I fell in love with the aesthetics immediately. The reasonable price, excellent location and included utilities were awesome bonuses. The geometry of the space is logical and at once daringly unorthodox. The structure was originally a carriage house in the 19th century- my kitchen window used to be where they would haul hay into the loft to feed the horses. The exposed brick and woodwork contrast with the track lights and modern drywall and it gives the impression of not just updating and remodeling, but of a thoughtful architect. My landlord's relative actually designed it, he's a charming little old gay man my landlord, keeps astonishing gardens- gardens that he insists I make use of. I intend to- I have visions of teas and cocktails dancing in my head already. I ought to throw a Halloween pregame with my wine rack and that garden. My dumb bells finally have a respectable home, it's a good set up. The load bearing rafter is strong enough to bear an elastic for tricep and lat pull downs. All I really lack is a pull-up solution and I'll have an excellent alternative for snow days when it's not safe to drive to the gym- the door frames are just a few inches too tall for my frame bar. I also have the tele, Apple TV, and so on connected for ambient music and Star Trek over dinner and my laptop cart looks dapper in its little spot, waiting for me to sit down and do some heavy-duty Steven Mitchell writing. I've got just about all of my hobbies covered in one glorious space with a spiral staircase and mint tea in the pot. My kitchen is huge. I could use a few more bowls and a couple implements as well as a new microwave oven, but I'm otherwise equipped to entertain about 7 before I run out of seating- not counting someone letting their legs dangle from the loft. I was a little afraid that I wouldn't be able to feed myself properly but I got back to angel hair and chicken breast pretty easy. I'll hook up my gameboy and do some more cooking this week. The bookshelf is still a mess and the bed loft is still filled with cardboard boxes. Once I sort out what to do with my excess books and find some fashionable storage trunks for the loft (second problem solves first as well), I'll be proper finished with this move. Hopefully, I can reach a satisfactory solution in time for tea with Shannon next weekend, but I have to balance decorating with lining up my Korean credits this week, a task for Thursday.

HIVampirism

It's said that stigmatization is the number one barrier to effective HIV treatment and prevention.  That's true, and if I were in a position to care passionately about prevention then I suppose it'd be more of a concern to me.

Since I myself am more in the treatment boat, I admit that prevention measures are really just something that I look on as a part of my civic responsibility, not something that I'm deeply concerned with.  Today I want to speak to those living with HIV, not to a frightened negative culture desperate to avoid the disease.

If we can acknowledge that 1 in four sexually active persons are going to contract HIV, maybe the time has come to acknowledge, unequivocally, that those people are more than a statistic after the point of infection and that we have a great deal to contribute.

I've dated a number of guys living with HIV who were still new to the experience, and on the one hand my heart goes out because I remember the feeling, but on the other I'm tired of it.  I'm tired of meeting people who have it in their heads that life has come to a screeching halt.  I'm tired of dating guys who would prefer instead of a picnic or a movie that I take them to a funeral parlor.

The damage to a persons ego- perhaps the core of their identity even- related to HIV diagnosis cannot be overstated.  

It's very much akin to dying, or maybe more like un-dying.  The HIV patient in the public eye is a lot like the vampire, existing in a status of regard somewhere uncomfortably between the living and the dead.

Some of this is left over fear and remorse from people who lived through the 1980s and early 1990s.  The gay community has never really gotten over the mentality of The Plague Years.  Many evenings I've listened to horror stories about virile, strong young men struck down and reduced to withered husks of the people they were.  

It's not just a fear of death that's being expressed here, these men are recalling tales of the destruction of an identity, the loss of male potency in the most severe fashion.  To a community that has struggled to reassert their right to be called proper men for the past 60 years, that's a terrifying fate.

What I'm saying here is that you've got HIV so you might as well come to terms with it.  I don't suggest however that you accept the diminishing of your life.  You have here a unique opportunity to defy and transcend death.

That's perhaps what makes the HIV patient of today so extraordinary. 

This brings us back to the loss of identity.  For me, self expression is like air.  I need it.  I need to be me, at all times, everywhere I go, for the most part without filtering.  As far as I'm concerned it's the only sensible way for anyone to live.  To hide your status from everyone diminishes your life because a part of how you must live is now hidden from everyone around you.  You will be compartmentalized and incomplete for as long as you let this go on.

Why should I, or anyone else living with HIV be ashamed of the fact?  It's a weird thing to moralize over, if you mean to go in that direction.  For one thing, there is no behavior short of celibacy that ensures protection from HIV.  It's a risk that you take whenever you engage a new partner, because when you get down to it you frankly don't know that person as intimately as you might suppose.  Finding someone you can trust is precious, but in the end it's a lottery.  

I'm sure that there are people who will disagree with me on this point.  Months or years long screenings of a person and their life and habits will not reveal to you everything going on up there.  That's half the fun anyway, what's the point dating someone who hasn't got any surprises left to share?

Now obviously, you want good surprises but they can't all be good, but that's the difference between people and Father Christmas.  Oh wait!  Father Christmas brings coal as well!  Even fairy godfathers will disappoint from time to time so it's absurd to ask for 100% from your lover.

But that's for another discussion ultimately.

Whether from shame, loss of identity, or sheer remorse and sadness, the freshly minted HIV patient is enduring one of the hardest parts of their lives.  For my part, I went straight to do pullups after my diagnosis.  From the first moment they told me I was positive I determined with myself that I wasn't going to allow the virus to dictate my life.  I had things to do, all that this means in the end is that I need to be more efficient and get things done faster.

It's been more of a partnership really.  I take the virus out to Dayton for my visits with the doctors, the virus and I stop at a steak and shake along the way, each time, and have Frisco Sliders.  I advertise the virus when I'm internet dating, it determines who I can attract and also does me the favor of screening through the assholes for me- why disclose face to face when I can just include it as a part of the initial screening?  Every once in a while you get some loser who tries to make you feel like you're less in emails, but let's be candid here: it's always fat dudes who I'd never touch and they're just upset that being a lard ass is still a bigger cock block than having a terminal sex virus.  As it should be.  

By the way childe, keep working out.  Your ability to get dates will still be 80% looks, the virus is just like a lousy credit score when it comes to keeping guys these days.  Some people will not commit to being with someone who they can't land a house with and some people will not commit to being with someone who they can't have worry free bareback with.  Facts of life.  Neither one will bother even looking if you let yourself go though.

In the end, the HIV patient must decide, on their own power or with help, that they have chosen to be alive.  The alternative is to live like a ghost of regret, haunting other people's lives.  This is actually one of the reasons I never became heavy into HIV activism.  I'm here to live my life, not to rattle my chains and insist that Ebeneezer start wearing condoms.

On the other hand, I have to make the concession that sex with me is inherently risky, undetectable virus load or not.  That means good practices and a certain kind of discretion.  Sometimes even if I wouldn't mind fooling around with someone I'll ultimately pass on it.  Sex with me a good time, but it's not so integral to anyone's life that I'll let them take a risk needlessly.  The concession with HIV here is that I've gotten particular about which ones I prefer to sleep with.

Other HIV patients are a good bet for you most likely, but at the same time there's no guarantee of compatibility, and to top it off you may very well be a person living with HIV who has chosen to be alive and they may be people who have chosen to be ghosts.  There is no compatibility that is possible there.

I've never understood the bug chaser community.  I figure if I read enough Twilight it'd start making sense, but the price of that being reading Twilight, I've decided to allow it to continue being a mystery for the time being.  

When I get with someone who's negative, I end out taking an attitude like Gary Oldman's Dracula in the bed scene with Mina.  Not to say that I haven't had partners where I end out going more in the Lucy in the Garden approach (usually with older gentlemen who know what they're doing) but the concession is a sense of responsibility.  I don't get how there are people who don't feel that responsibility.  

The bug chaser, to me, is nothing at all unlike the human asking for vampirism.  They have no idea what they're asking for and they're just not qualified to make a rational decision about it.  So we have to make it for them and say "no."

Think of it like the Third Tradition in VTM.  Siring of progeny is prohibited, but somehow it keeps happening, usually by younger vampires who haven't accepted their responsibilities under the Camarilla yet.  Of course, I could just be spouting more Malkavian nonsense.  But you have to admit, somewhere in the whimsy there's a spark of truth.

The negotiation in the end is that you choose to live, but not recklessly or at the expense of others- that's the lesson that you ought to look to take away if you've been recently diagnosed.  The alternative is that you may choose to die, either literally or in the most horrible figurative sense.  

Please don't die figuratively, it's awful.  And it will cost you dates with people who would otherwise take an interest.  It's a brave new world childe, people are less afraid of the HIV in your blood and more concerned with the consuming sorrow in your heart.  

When you beat that sorrow, things inevitably feel better because you've come back to life- to real life, not just clocking in but properly living, having hobbies and creating and inventing and expressing and being vibrant, undefeated, vindicated, quixotic and alive.  That's the opportunity that's before you.  The chance to laugh at death.

And let me tell you, guys get turned on by that.

Come Hell or Fucking Dental Floss

"This is not fucking happening."

It was seven o’clock at night and I was staring at my reflection in the mirror. He looked kinda cut (my friends tell me more than kinda, somehow I can’t quite seem to believe them) he had on some cute shorts and he was dripping with shower leftovers. I’d have thought that I looked pretty sexy, if only there wasn’t a piece of dental floss lodged between my lower two left incisors.

"Fucking derp…aaaaaaaa"

I opened my mouth wide as I plunged the tooth with my finger like a cyclops in “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” trying to catch the male lead as he hides between two rocks. I didn’t get my eye poked out and my treasure stolen, but I otherwise experienced the same level of success. I impotently dragged my fingernail across my teeth trying to snag the waxy, shredded bit of string and got nothing more than little wisps of it. Twenty minutes of derping like a Harryhausen monster, to no avail.

"It doesn’t really hurt, if I just sort of brush it into the tooth it’s not noticeable. Fuck it I just need to do this some other night, someone up there is trying to tell me something."

Nope. Not this time. I’ve spent enough nights settling for something that “will do.” That wasn’t going to be tonight.

"I know I own some fucking tweezers," I mumbled as I rummaged through a cardboard box full of bathroom goods. It didn’t take long, I made the deliberate decision to own tweezers with red handles for just this purpose and I drug them out of the box and held them aloft like Link finding the Boss Key.

I walked back into the bathroom as though I’d just solved the Water Temple and opened my mouth again. There it was still, putting unpleasant pressure on my teeth like I was at the orthodontist and making my lower incisors look greener and more muppet-like than ever before.

Wouldn’t do for tonight, I had a mission and I needed to look right for it. I teased one part of the string out from the lingual side of the dental arcade and reached in with the tweezers. I got hold of it and tugged like a cobra striking at a mongoose. I brought away a little shred of it. Fucking Riki-tiki-tavi piece of string was wrecking all my eggs.

"Fuck! How can this literally be like pulling fucking teeth!"

It was, in fact. It was like I was learning goddam dentistry for one night on the town. It made sense though, this was too important. I spent another half hour trying to coax the floss out of my teeth with the tweezers.

"No dice huh. Maybe I really am staying in tonight after all."

Not an acceptable answer. “Alright, here we go’” I thought, “I’m that idiot asking the internet how to get floss out of his teeth.”

Made sense really. I’d spent hours googling all week to get ready for this objective, I’d interpreted a dozen different scenarios and how they’d fall out and what I’d say for each one, bounced my line off my friend. I had identified via internet 5 events suitable to propose in the next three weeks, if scheduling made the first, second or third choices unworkable. Scheduling wasn’t going to be a thing, this would be a yes or no question. I had over-prepared and meticulously planned, because that is what I do when I have a goal.

To be stymied because a piece of 1.99 string from Kroger didn’t get the goddam memo? I think not.

With the internet knowledge in hand I left my desk and went back to the bathroom. I took a large length of floss from the dispenser and tied a knot in it as had been suggested. Then, I set the string between the affected teeth and gently, carefully pulled it through the gap.

"Fuck."

It didn’t work. But relentless people don’t accept “can’t be done” so I tied a bigger, double knot in the string and pulled it through again. It was a little painful, it was difficult and it was scary for just a second and I feared the possibility of literally ripping a tooth out of its socket. Not a great way to spend 8pm, let me tell you.

It’s the only scenario that I hadn’t prepared for- I’d thought of “what if he says no” or “what if he’s talking to someone right now” and I’d thought of “what if he’s just not into you?” I was cool with all those possibilities. I wasn’t latching my sense of happiness on asking one guy out on one date, I just needed to ask. I wasn’t an impoverished student living at my mom’s place anymore and I could shoot for the moon, I was entirely prepared to lose some astronauts in the process. What I was not willing to accept was failure to launch.

I took a deep breath, set the floss with the larger knot between my teeth again and began gently tugging at it. Like a bell had gone off and there was such a thing as quittin time for inconveniences, the bit of floss slid out of my teeth and off to whatever wild and wacky Saturday night it had in store. Most likely hittin on the honeys in the bottom of my rubbish bin.

By the time I found him, I’d ended out spending the evening talking to some friends and walking High street in intermittent rain with them, which was okay because my shirt was white and evidently it just got a little more devil-may-care looking as I got more and more wet as I actually got complimented on it. I hit a couple spots where I figured I could find him, no luck.

I was about resigned to going home and watching a chick flick in defeat (Married Life, yeah it’s a chick flick but this is me, I like em with attempted murder) as I was walking away from the last bar I’d figured to look at- which given that I’d only looked at two was pretty weak but whatever. They had some atrocious cover to get in and I wasn’t desperate, just determined, I’d just try this some other night.

Then, as I was walking away, it dawned on me: he had been here. He’d been here and he’d found out about the atrocious cover and he hadn’t paid it either. I saw the incident in my head, a “fuck that” grimace and wandering off with friends in tow.

Wandering to where? Well he was gay and in Columbus and trying to party like a drunken 19 year old, so if Axis wasn’t gonna happen…

Union. “Of course,” I thought as it came into view. “No guarantee but I’ll just make a pass through, one last college try for the night and then I’ll go home and wait to do this later.”

It was crowded as always, Union is the meat market bar in this town and it’s always slammed with at least 120 fags and their friends, drunken straight girls and awkward straight guys trying to look like they're cool with all of this so their date will think they’re not a homophobic tool. A for effort guys, you’re not the losers on Park street, you go home with your head up high if that skanky number in the cocktail dress turns you down.

It was about 11:30 but the time I found him and he was drunk the drunk of partying gay boys. Sort of falling over, participating in de facto karaoke, and dancing with his (friends?) (guy he’s seeing?) (holy shit abort this is an awful idea Adam).

"No, Other Adam, tonight I’m doing this."

And I did. Now there’s an entirely real possibility that the “done, whenever you want to” I got from my drunken quarry won’t be binding on his sober counterpart. Hell, five bucks says he doesn’t even remember it tomorrow (today, it’s 7AM now) or that if he does he’ll still blow me off, but that’s not what matters.

I went out to lie a monster of a crush in its grave and that’s exactly what I did, come hell or fucking dental floss.

Narrative

I'd thought about some facebooking or twitter as they have more accessibility to the bumper-sticker thinker of the modern era, but anyone who's got a position on Syria that can be summed up in 250 characters or less is a fucking moron, so get a snack and settle in.

Assumptions

It'd be disingenuous and daft to suggest that I'm going into this without assumptions, so here they are.  If you disagree with these points, then you can stop here- I understand that not everyone trusts some of these things to be true as I do and that's understandable, but if you don't subscribe to these points then the discussion isn't going to be fruitful.

Chemical weapons were deployed in Syria repeatedly, most notably in the Demascus incident.

The Assad regime is the responsible party for these attacks.

The Assad regime possesses the means to manufacture such weapons and has a stockpile as implicitly admitted by their foreign minister yesterday.

The US intelligence mechanism is adequately efficient and has compiled a sufficient case that awaiting UN inspection results is now redundant.

Regime change is not a sought after goal, but if it were to happen spontaneously without our handling of it or its costs directly we wouldn't mind.

The Play by Play for The Limited Strike

In the immediate future, the Russian initiative runs to ground and military strikes begin.  Assad regime targets involved in the manufacture, storage and deployment of chemical weapons are hit and there is collateral damage to that organization as nearby assets are damaged by bombs and cruise missiles.

The Risks

The chemical weapons are not fully and completely destroyed and a contamination event occurs in which sarin or other deadly substances waft over Syria and her neighbors leading to mass casualties.

Destruction of the weapons are incomplete in this fashion and they are salvaged by "interested parties."  Who interested parties are and what their agenda for those weapons are is anyone's guess at that point, but it's bad news as will be discussed in further detail below.

The Benefits

Assad's military is suddenly fighting a multi-front conflict, and one of those fronts is the West led by US military assets.  Assad doesn't necessarily fold, but his war machine is thrown into disarray in the wake of the attacks and is significantly hampered in its efforts to restore dominance over the rebels.  No predictions from me on how the war ends.

The international community restores credibility in its ability to, in fact, reign in WMD manufacture without a full-on invasion.

Risk to western warfighters and inspectors is reduced compared to the Russian plan.

Development of the facilities needed for Syria to responsibly destroy its weapons is avoided in part as most of the weapons are destroyed in the attacks  How to deal with the remainder is a relevant question as no one has as yet addressed- who will foot that bill?  The US and Russia have both invested billions since the end of the Cold War to accomplish the same task, and we're not done with disposing of our chemical weapons yet.  We started dismantling in '97 here in the states.

The Play by Play for the Russian Initiative

In the next few weeks, a UN resolution comes to pass along the lines of that being put together in France requiring the relinquishing of all chemical weapons by the Assad regime.  In the following weeks, inspection teams are put together and preparations are made for them and disposal teams to enter the country and remove the weapons.

That's in the long run.  At the moment, a frantic game of cat and mouse is no doubt being played between the western intelligence community and those men who Assad has no doubt ordered to eliminate records of the bulk of his chemical weapons and to liquidate the those assets in the international terrorist black market.  The one group is trying very hard to keep track as well as they can for where these weapons are and the other is racing to get them out of sight.  More below.

Over the course of the next decade or more, the international community pours billions of dollars into dismantling these weapons, extracting them, tracking them and keeping them out of the wrong hands.  The task requires, implicitly, that boots end up on the ground in Syria to ensure that the UN disarmament teams can do their jobs.

The Risks

When the UN resolution passes and those inspectors go to Syria, they face all kinds of challenges.  They came under fire and weren't able to complete their missions when they were there for simple humanitarian inspections and the only thing that might suggest that they'd have more luck this time around is that the alternative for Assad is a military solution to his weapons.  The short version of all this is that the naive expectation of many is that the Russian initiative is a bloodless, cheap option by comparison that leads to fewer western lives lost and more weapons accounted for is a beautiful but unrealistic pipe-dream.  

It's an option, and it has risks just like a military strike does in terms of lives lost, weapons unaccounted for, and money spent in the billions.

It's heavy stuff, thought you could use the joke about now.

There's no guarantee that blue-helmeted UN guards and their inspectors and disposal teams will be able to achieve safe passage in a country now saturated with fighters from groups like Hezbollah and Al Qaeda who aren't going to just capitulate because we threaten to blow up the weapons of Assad.  We call them radical extremists for a reason.

Those organizations and the other groups that now fight in that country as well as the untenable security situation there make it all the more imperative that any solution to the chemical weapon issue be swift.  As Assad's guys scramble to get rid of those weapons and raise him some revenue to continue a costly, two-year war, there's no telling who they'll get to buy from them.

I guarantee this though: if Assad's government wants to sell chemical weapons at closeout bargain prices in Syria, they won't have much trouble finding a buyer, perhaps in Iran or Iraqi insurgents or perhaps just the first at hand militant organization willing to cough up cash to take the weapons off Assad's hands.  Whoever that may be and whatever their targets may be.

The same risks with not destroying the weapons thoroughly in a military strike are present in a protracted diplomatic engagement, all kinds of interested parties can get access to these weapons right now as you read.

The Biggest Risk

The biggest risk on the table is with the diplomatic solution, because while our intel guys scramble to keep track of these weapons, ultimately Assad's guys are the ones with their hands on them, and that means that sooner or later, they're going to disappear to God knows where.

If- and this is not an if that is out of the question- the Russian initiative evaporates in coming days or weeks, Assad's guys will be right where they were the other day and we'll be right where we were the other day looking at cruise missiles and bombs.  The only difference is that the weapons we want to explode may very well no longer be there anymore.

If that's the case, then we've wasted precious time with the weapons still in our sights and in Syria and now what was a "Syrian Question" becomes a global WMD proliferation nightmare that I don't care to contemplate further at this time.

In Sum

Neither plan is without its risks.  I'm not by any means a war-hawk.  However, I believe in the ability of the black market to move illicit goods and I believe in the integrity of the modern US intelligence infrastructure.  Indeed, the very strength of that capability has been under fire for months now, you've either got to claim that we don't know what's going on or that we're spying on literally everyone, can't have it both ways.

When I examine the potential risks and the scenarios that grow out of either of these options being mishandled, it looks grim.  In the end however, the most immediate response that offers the best risk and prevents Assad from deploying these weapons again is best.

The assumption seems to be that he's going to stop at one outrage and one war crime, that we've put him on notice and that he wouldn't dare to use such weapons again.  After all, the US is threatening attack and the international community is actually cooperating.  That's the logic in any event, but desperate men are often beyond logic, and it's awfully early to rule out the possibility of another chemical attack.

Conclusion

I appreciate the risks and I understand if you prefer to hope for the best, but I don't intend to be one of those who regretted not calling for action when we still had the chance a la Rwanda or the Rhineland.  "Peace in our time" sounds like a great relief for everyone, but I'd urge you to remember that not every military solution is the ill-considered knee jerk of an overgrown, paranoid man-child who wants to land on a carrier with a "mission accomplished" banner, and not every hailed peace agreement is the work of a visionary who has saved the world.

Some threats to our national and international security are credible and do demand action, and when we see that that's the case, we ought to act.